3,000 Guild Wars 2 Players Banned For Karma Exploit

ArenaNet, developers of their newest title Guild Wars 2, has permanently banned 3,000 players from Guild Wars 2 for taking advantage of an exploit that would allow a player to craft a high level weapon at “one thousandth of their normal price.” Apparently an emergency patch was pushed out and was able to close the loophole and players that “significantly” exploited it have been thrown out of the game. Those who didn’t overuse the exploit were given 72 hours suspensions and will likely have their account back once that timer finishes.

Lead producer Chris Whiteside posted on Reddit with further explanatory information that has cleared things up. “Today we banned a number of players for exploiting Guild Wars 2. We take our community and the integrity of the game very seriously, and want to be clear that intentionally exploiting the game is unacceptable. The players we banned were certainly intentionally and repeatedly exploiting a bug in the game. We intended to send a very clear message that exploiting the game in this way will not be tolerated, and we believe this message now has been well understood.”

Whiteside has gone to say that ArenaNet is willing “just this once” to change the perma-bans into 72 hours suspensions. This exploit that players have been extensively using involved purchasing abnormally cheap items from a karma vendor and then fusing them to make higher level items at the mystic forge in the game. The mass exploitation of the loophole was pretty dangerous as it threatened to flood the market with very powerful items and would then destabilize Guild Wars 2’s economic system. That said, bans were rightly given out.

“Let me assure you: All the people we banned were fully aware of it being an exploit,” said ArenaNet on Twitter. “If you bought a few weapons – you were not banned. If you massively exploited it – you were.”

A popular YouTuber known as Kripparian was also found among those who took advantage of the exploit and was banned. You might recognize him as a member of the first team that was able to take on Inferno Diablo and beat him on hardcore mode (if you died once in hardcore mode, you lost the entire game). Kripparian was live streaming this exploit on Twitch TV and found that he was issued the dreaded 72 hour suspension right in the middle of his live stream. ArenaNet had confirmed that this ban was later turned into a permanent ban. Thankfully since they are “just this once” turning perma-bans into suspensions, he’ll have his account back in no time.

Kripparian posted a video response to the ban on YouTube. If you want to see the action, skip over to 7:30 to see the moment the ban hammer fell on this YouTuber.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxbanRWHrA

Has anyone been playing Guild Wars 2 lately? Have you taken advantage of the exploit? Were you among the 3,000 players that was banned for taking advantage of this exploit? Are you at least getting your account back?

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